DOCSLIB.ORG

A Sociolinguistic Survey of the Adara of Kaduna and Niger States, Nigeria

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
A Sociolinguistic Survey of the Adara of Kaduna and Niger States, Nigeria DigitalResources Electronic Survey Report 2018-004 A Sociolinguistic Survey of the Adara of Kaduna and Niger States, Nigeria Luther Hon, Grace Ajaegbu, Carol Magnusson, Uche S. Nweke, and Zachariah Yoder A Sociolinguistic Survey of the Adara of Kaduna and Niger States, Nigeria Luther Hon, Grace Ajaegbu, Carol Magnusson, Uche S. Nweke, and Zachariah Yoder SIL International® 2018 SIL Electronic Survey Report 2018-004, March 2018 © 2018 SIL International® All rights reserved Abstract The survey team visited the Adara language group of Kachia, Kajuru and Paikoro Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Kaduna and Niger States in Nigeria, from March 1 to March 16, 2011. The team did not visit Muya LGA because the dialect spoken is the same as the one spoken in Paikoro LGA. The Adara people are commonly called Kadara, especially by outsiders. They are known to speak dialects of the Kadara language. The dialects are Adara [kad], Ada [kad], Eneje [kad], Ajiya [idc] and Ekhwa [ikv]. The main goal of the survey was to determine the most suitable dialect(s) that all speakers of Adara understand and accept as the best for a standard written form of Adara that would serve all of them. The survey team tested for intelligibility, interviewed different people and groups, gathered words for checking lexical similarity and asked the people about their potential support of a language project. The name Adara has two meanings in this work: “Adara” as the name of the language, and “Adara” as the name of one of the dialects. As such, we will use “the Adara language” for the whole language, “the Adara people” for the whole people, and “the Adara dialect” for the dialect. For language and people, we will use Kadara in square brackets after Adara when referring to the language and the people, for example: “Adara [Kadara] language” and “Adara [Kadara] people.” Our findings indicate that the Adara dialect may be developed to serve the Adara, Ada and Eneje speakers, while the Ajiya and Ekhwa dialects may need separate literature. Alternatively, the Ada dialect may be developed to serve only Ada and Eneje speakers, while Adara, Ajiya and Ekhwa dialects may each need separate literature. Acknowledgements This survey would not have been possible without the support of many people throughout the language area surveyed. We express our profound gratitude firstly to the paramount ruler, His Royal Highness, the Agom-Adara,1 Mr Maiwada Galadima (JP2), who permitted us to go into the villages of the Adara people to do our work. We also express our appreciation to the various district, village and family heads who mobilized their people to participate in the survey process. We appreciate the time and energy of those who volunteered to help us in eliciting the wordlists from the five Adara varieties, those who narrated the stories used for testing dialect comprehension, as well as the pastors, other church leaders and teachers who, in spite of their tight schedules, responded patiently to the questions on our interview forms. 1 The literal translation from the Adara language means “chief person” or more likely “chief of the Adara people.” Agom means ‘chief’ and Adara means ‘person’. 2 The abbreviation JP means Jerusalem Pilgrim. Contents Tables 1 Introduction 1.1 Previous research/background information 1.2 Social setting 1.2.1 Adara administrative setting 1.2.2 Adara villages 1.2.3 Neighboring languages 1.2.4 Intermarriage 1.2.5 Agriculture and economic/commercial units 1.2.6 Health care services 1.2.7 Religious profile 1.2.8 Estimated population 1.3 Goals 2 Language identification 2.1 The dialects that the Adara people speak in their area 2.2 Dialect relatedness 2.3 Summary of language identification 3 Social interaction 3.1 Intermarriage between the Adara [Kadara] people 3.2 Interaction with neighboring language groups 3.3 Church networks and Christian associations in the Adara [Kadara] language area 3.4 Government officials in the area 3.5 Local development associations 3.6 Economic/commercial units 4 Language vitality 4.1 Children’s language use 4.2 The domains where Adara is primarily spoken 4.3 The Adara [Kadara] groups who mainly speak the local language without mixing with Hausa 4.4 The language that the people mostly use in rural and urban areas 4.5 The people’s perception of their language 4.6 The people’s attitudes towards the shift and death statuses of their language 4.7 The Adara [Kadara] people’s attitudes towards languages of wider communication 4.8 Summary of language vitality 5 Language acceptability 5.1 The dialect(s) that people are willing to read and write in 5.2 Most acceptable dialect that might be used as a standard written form for all Adara people 5.3 The languages that literature is available in 5.4 Summary of language acceptability 6 Intelligibility 6.1 The dialect(s) that the people are reported to understand 6.2 Recorded text testing 6.3 Summary of intelligibility 7 Bilingual proficiency/language use 7.1 Other languages spoken by the Adara [Kadara] people 7.2 Neighboring languages spoken fluently by the Adara [Kadara] people 7.3 Language spoken by each segment of the Adara [Kadara] society 7.4 Where these languages are learned 7.5 Summary of bilingualism iv v 8 Contact patterns 8.1 Interaction among speakers of the dialects 8.2 Local development associations 8.3 Church networks and Christian associations in the Adara [Kadara] language area 9 Literacy 9.1 The age group(s) that can read and write 9.2 The language(s) that each age group can read and write well 9.3 The best medium to serve the Adara [Kadara] people 9.4 Summary of literacy 10 Church support 10.1 Church leaders’ feelings about language development 10.2 The people’s desire for materials in their language 10.3 The people’s ability to work together and support a language project 10.4 Summary of church support 11 Methodology 11.1 Interviews 11.2 Recorded text testing (RTT) 11.2.1 Test development and administration 11.2.2 Reliability of the RTT method 11.2.3 Subject selection 11.2.4 Testing procedure 11.2.5 Scoring 11.2.6 Post-test questions 11.3 Wordlist 11.3.1 Wordlist elicitation 11.3.2 Wordlist comparison 11.4 Observation 11.5 Sampling 11.6 Participatory method 12 Results 12.1 Lexical similarity and interpretation 12.2 Adara [Kadara] dialects for which people can score above 75 percent on RTT 13 Findings 14 Conclusion and recommendation Appendix A: Ada of Kaduna Wordlist Appendix B: Ankwa of Kaduna Wordlist Appendix C: Adara of Kaduna Wordlist Appendix D: Eneje of Kaduna Wordlist Appendix E: Adja of Kaduna Wordlist References Tables Table 1. Names of villages visited and the dialects spoken in each Table 2. Names of markets and market days Table 3. Percentage of Adara [Kadara] language speakers per LGA Table 4. Names of dialects and alternate names Table 5. Where wordlists were elicited and checked Table 6. Comparing words for ‘medicine’ Table 7. Lexical similarity percentage Table 8. Test site and recorded text testing percentage Table 9. Comparing three Eneje texts (different subjects) vi 1 Introduction The purpose of the Adara survey was to elicit data that would assist the Adara people and interested organizations that are involved in language development to identify which of the dialects of the Adara language group of the southern parts of Kaduna and Niger States of Nigeria is most suitable and accepted by the people for a standard written form of the Adara language. The survey team visited the Adara language group of Kachia, Kajuru, and Paikoro Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Kaduna and Niger States in Nigeria, from March 1 to March 16, 2011. The Adara people are commonly called Kadara, especially by outsiders. They are known to speak dialects of the Kadara language. The dialects surveyed are Adara dialect [kad], Ada [kad], Eneje [kad], Ajiya [idc] and Ekhwa [ikv]. Note that there are two meanings of Adara used in this report, “Adara dialect” and “Adara language.” One dialect of the Adara language is also called Adara. Therefore, in this report, we will be referring to this dialect as “the Adara dialect,” the whole language as “the Adara language” and the people as “the Adara people.” We will use Kadara in square brackets after Adara when referring to the language and the people, for example: “Adara [Kadara] language” and “Adara [Kadara] people.” Map of the Adara area © 2016 OCHA ROWCA, through Ngandu Kazadi Bruno-Salomon, the Information Management Officer, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Nigeria – 15, Mississippi Street, Maitama, Abuja. Adapted by John Muniru (used QGIS, free mapping software). Used with permission. 1.1 Previous research/background information Temple reports that Adara [Kadara] is spoken in the southern part of the old Zaria Province in Northern Nigeria, in the districts of Zana, Wali and Kajuru as well as at Riban and in Fuka, in Kuta District of the former Niger Province (1919:179). Gunn further writes that the Adara [Kadara] language is spoken in Bida, Agaie and Abuja Emirates. These areas are now parts of Paikoro and Muya LGAs (1956:123). 1 2 However, he maintains that the actual settlements of the speakers in these three places are not known. Dancy and Gray, in their survey report of 1966, state that the language is spoken north of Abuja and north-east of Minna, while Crozier and Blench (1992:62) report that the speakers of Adara [Kadara] are located in Kachia LGA of Kaduna State and in the former Chanchaga LGA, now Paikoro and Muya LGAs of Niger State.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Sociolinguistic Profile of the Kyoli (Cori) [Cry] Language of Kaduna State, Nigeria
    DigitalResources Electronic Survey Report 2020-012 A Sociolinguistic Profile of the Kyoli (Cori) [cry] Language of Kaduna State, Nigeria Ken Decker, John Muniru, Julius Dabet, Benard Abraham, Jonah Innocent A Sociolinguistic Profile of the Kyoli (Cori) [cry] Language of Kaduna State, Nigeria Ken Decker, John Muniru, Julius Dabet, Benard Abraham, Jonah Innocent SIL International® 2020 SIL Electronic Survey Report 2020-012, October 2020 © 2020 SIL International® All rights reserved Data and materials collected by researchers in an era before documentation of permission was standardized may be included in this publication. SIL makes diligent efforts to identify and acknowledge sources and to obtain appropriate permissions wherever possible, acting in good faith and on the best information available at the time of publication. Abstract This report describes a sociolinguistic survey conducted among the Kyoli-speaking communities in Jaba Local Government Area (LGA), Kaduna State, in central Nigeria. The Ethnologue (Eberhard et al. 2020a) classifies Kyoli [cry] as a Niger-Congo, Atlantic Congo, Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Plateau, Western, Northwestern, Hyamic language. During the survey, it was learned that the speakers of the language prefer to spell the name of their language <Kyoli>, which is pronounced as [kjoli] or [çjoli]. They refer to speakers of the language as Kwoli. We estimate that there may be about 7,000 to 8,000 speakers of Kyoli, which is most if not all the ethnic group. The goals of this research included gaining a better understanding of the role of Kyoli and other languages in the lives of the Kwoli people. Our data indicate that Kyoli is used at a sustainable level of orality, EGIDS 6a.
    [Show full text]
  • Annex H. Summary of the Early Grade Reading Materials Survey in Senegal
    Annex H. Summary of the Early Grade Reading Materials Survey in Senegal Geography and Demographics 196,722 square Size: kilometers (km2) Population: 14 million (2015) Capital: Dakar Urban: 44% (2015) Administrative 14 regions Divisions: Religion: 95% Muslim 4% Christian 1% Traditional Source: Central Intelligence Agency (2015). Note: Population and percentages are rounded. Literacy Projected 2013 Primary School 2015 Age Population (aged 2.2 million Literacy a a 7–12 years): Rates: Overall Male Female Adult (aged 2013 Primary School 56% 68% 44% 84%, up from 65% in 1999 >15 years) GER:a Youth (aged 2013 Pre-primary School 70% 76% 64% 15%,up from 3% in 1999 15–24 years) GER:a Language: French Mean: 18.4 correct words per minute When: 2009 Oral Reading Fluency: Standard deviation: 20.6 Sample EGRA Where: 11 regions 18% zero scores Resultsb 11% reading with ≥60% Reading comprehension Who: 687 P3 students Comprehension: 52% zero scores Note: EGRA = Early Grade Reading Assessment; GER = Gross Enrollment Rate; P3 = Primary Grade 3. Percentages are rounded. a Source: UNESCO (2015). b Source: Pouezevara et al. (2010). Language Number of Living Languages:a 210 Major Languagesb Estimated Populationc Government Recognized Statusd 202 DERP in Africa—Reading Materials Survey Final Report 47,000 (L1) (2015) French “Official” language 3.9 million (L2) (2013) “National” language Wolof 5.2 million (L1) (2015) de facto largest LWC Pulaar 3.5 million (L1) (2015) “National” language Serer-Sine 1.4 million (L1) (2015) “National” language Maninkakan (i.e., Malinké) 1.3 million (L1) (2015) “National” language Soninke 281,000 (L1) (2015) “National” language Jola-Fonyi (i.e., Diola) 340,000 (L1) “National” language Balant, Bayot, Guñuun, Hassanya, Jalunga, Kanjaad, Laalaa, Mandinka, Manjaaku, “National” languages Mankaañ, Mënik, Ndut, Noon, __ Oniyan, Paloor, and Saafi- Saafi Note: L1 = first language; L2 = second language; LWC = language of wider communication.
    [Show full text]
  • Language Classification in the Ethnologue and Its Consequences (Paper)
    Sarah E. Cornwell The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada Language Classification in The Ethnologue and its Consequences (Paper) Abstract: The Ethnologue is a widely used classificatory standard for the world’s 7000+ natural languages. However, the motives and processes used by The Ethnologue’s governing body, SIL International, have come under criticism by linguists. This paper investigates how The Ethnologue answers the question “What is a language?” through the theoretical lens presented by Bowker and Star in Sorting Things Out (1999) and presents some consequences of those classificatory decisions. 1. Introduction Language is central to human culture and experience. It is the central core of our communicative capacity, running through all media of communication. Due to this essential role, there is a need to classify and count languages and their speakers1. Governments need to communicate with citizens, libraries need to catalogue books by language, and search engines need to return webpages in the appropriate language for each searcher. For these reasons among others, there is a strong institutional need for a standardized classification structure and labelling system for languages. The most widespread current classificatory infrastructure for languages is based on The Ethnologue. This essay will critically evaluate The Ethnologue using the Foucauldian theory developed for investigating classification structures by Bowker and Star (1999) in Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences. 2. The Ethnologue The Ethnologue is a catalogue of all the world’s languages. First compiled in 1951, The Ethnologue is currently in its 20th edition and contains descriptions of 7099 living languages (2017). Since 1997, The Ethnologue has been available freely online and widely accessible (Simons & Fennig, 2017).
    [Show full text]
  • Mapping India's Language and Mother Tongue Diversity and Its
    Mapping India’s Language and Mother Tongue Diversity and its Exclusion in the Indian Census Dr. Shivakumar Jolad1 and Aayush Agarwal2 1FLAME University, Lavale, Pune, India 2Centre for Social and Behavioural Change, Ashoka University, New Delhi, India Abstract In this article, we critique the process of linguistic data enumeration and classification by the Census of India. We map out inclusion and exclusion under Scheduled and non-Scheduled languages and their mother tongues and their representation in state bureaucracies, the judiciary, and education. We highlight that Census classification leads to delegitimization of ‘mother tongues’ that deserve the status of language and official recognition by the state. We argue that the blanket exclusion of languages and mother tongues based on numerical thresholds disregards the languages of about 18.7 million speakers in India. We compute and map the Linguistic Diversity Index of India at the national and state levels and show that the exclusion of mother tongues undermines the linguistic diversity of states. We show that the Hindi belt shows the maximum divergence in Language and Mother Tongue Diversity. We stress the need for India to officially acknowledge the linguistic diversity of states and make the Census classification and enumeration to reflect the true Linguistic diversity. Introduction India and the Indian subcontinent have long been known for their rich diversity in languages and cultures which had baffled travelers, invaders, and colonizers. Amir Khusru, Sufi poet and scholar of the 13th century, wrote about the diversity of languages in Northern India from Sindhi, Punjabi, and Gujarati to Telugu and Bengali (Grierson, 1903-27, vol.
    [Show full text]
  • The Components of Sustainable Multilingual Education Programs
    A Two-Way Bridge The Components of Sustainable Multilingual Education Programs Studies demonstrate that learning is most effective when the instruction is received in the language the learner knows best. This simple truth extends from basic reading and writing skills in the first language to second language acquisition. In multilingual education programs (MLE) that start with the mother tongue, learners use their own language for learning in the early grades, while also learning the official language as a classroom subject. As learners gain competence in understanding, speaking, reading and writing the language of education, teachers begin using it for instruction. This instructional bridge between the community language and the language of wider communication enables learners—children and adults alike—to meet their broader multilingual goals while retaining their local language and culture. This booklet addresses several important aspects of MLE: ■ The voices of ethnolinguistic minority communities are often not heard. Therefore, advocacy is appropriate for these communities to meet their MLE needs. ■ Conventional instructional methods are not adequate for MLE programs. Educators at both community and national levels need to develop their capacity to design and implement MLE programs. ■ Developing a writing system for a non-dominant language is a challenging but essential early step in developing an MLE program. ■ MLE not only requires the commitment and resources of the local community, but also the resources and expertise available from government agencies, NGOs or others. Resource linking brings the partners together so that each one contributes its own particular resources. ■ MLE gives children and adults a firm foundation for continuing to learn throughout their lives.
    [Show full text]
  • English Planning for Global Cooperation in Sign Language Development Through Networks, Finland, the US, Colombia and Japan Consultants and Resources
    SIL International 2009 Partners in Language Development UPDATE YEARS 1934–2009 “No one has ever seen a book in our language before.” Until this year, the Koda community in Bangladesh did not have a written form of their language. Some Koda people thought it was impossible to write their language. A cooperative education and development program for this community was started by Food for the Hungry and SIL. In 2009, a group of eager Koda men met several times with SIL staff to make decisions about a writing system for their language. The men—some of whom had only attended school for two years—participated in an orthography workshop with SIL consultants and began to write in their own language. They worked together to identify the speech sounds that are the same as in Bangla (the national language), the several sounds that are different, and how to Each workshop represent each sound in an alphabet—the first step towards uniform spelling. participant wrote When workshop participants were asked to write stories about their daily lives and a story in Koda and culture, they responded, “We have never written a story before.” But by the end of made his own book. These men have the workshop, each participant had written a short story and made his own book to started to fulfill their take back to his village—an achievement that gave them confidence and increased community’s desire to self-esteem. protect and preserve SIL grew out of one man’s concern for people speaking languages that lacked written their language.
    [Show full text]
  • A Sketch of the Linguistic Geography of Signed Languages in the Caribbean1,2
    OCCASIONAL PAPER No. 38 A SKETCH OF THE LINGUISTIC GEOGRAPHY OF SIGNED LANGUAGES IN THE CARIBBEAN Ben Braithwaite The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine June 2017 SCL OCCASIONAL PAPERS PAPER NUMBER 38—JUNE 2017 Edited by Ronald Kephart (2014–2016) and Joseph T. Farquharson (2016–2018), SCL Publications Officers Copy editing by Sally J. Delgado and Ronald Kephart Proofreading by Paulson Skerritt and Sulare Telford EDITORIAL BOARD Joseph T. Farquharson The University of the West Indies, Mona (Chair) Janet L. Donnelly College of the Bahamas David Frank SIL International Ronald Kephart University of North Florida Salikoko S. Mufwene University of Chicago Ian E. Robertson The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Geraldine Skeete The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Donald C. Winford Ohio State University PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY FOR CARIBBEAN LINGUISTICS (SCL) c/o Department of Language, Linguistics and Philosophy, The University of the West Indies, Mona campus, Kingston 7, Jamaica. <www.scl-online.net> © 2017 Ben Braithwaite. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the author. ISSN 1726–2496 THE LINGUISTIC GEOGRAPHY OF SIGNED LANGUAGES 3 A Sketch of the Linguistic Geography of Signed Languages in the Caribbean1,2 Ben Braithwaite The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine 1. Introduction HE Caribbean… is the location of almost every type of linguistic “Tphenomenon, and of every type of language situation. For example, trade and contact jargons, creole languages and dialects, ethnic vernaculars, and regional and nonstandard dialects are all spoken. There are also ancestral languages used for religious purposes…, regional standards, and international standards.
    [Show full text]
  • An Atlas of Nigerian Languages
    AN ATLAS OF NIGERIAN LANGUAGES 3rd. Edition Roger Blench Kay Williamson Educational Foundation 8, Guest Road, Cambridge CB1 2AL United Kingdom Voice/Answerphone 00-44-(0)1223-560687 Mobile 00-44-(0)7967-696804 E-mail [email protected] http://rogerblench.info/RBOP.htm Skype 2.0 identity: roger blench i Introduction The present electronic is a fully revised and amended edition of ‘An Index of Nigerian Languages’ by David Crozier and Roger Blench (1992), which replaced Keir Hansford, John Bendor-Samuel and Ron Stanford (1976), a pioneering attempt to synthesize what was known at the time about the languages of Nigeria and their classification. Definition of a Language The preparation of a listing of Nigerian languages inevitably begs the question of the definition of a language. The terms 'language' and 'dialect' have rather different meanings in informal speech from the more rigorous definitions that must be attempted by linguists. Dialect, in particular, is a somewhat pejorative term suggesting it is merely a local variant of a 'central' language. In linguistic terms, however, dialect is merely a regional, social or occupational variant of another speech-form. There is no presupposition about its importance or otherwise. Because of these problems, the more neutral term 'lect' is coming into increasing use to describe any type of distinctive speech-form. However, the Index inevitably must have head entries and this involves selecting some terms from the thousands of names recorded and using them to cover a particular linguistic nucleus. In general, the choice of a particular lect name as a head-entry should ideally be made solely on linguistic grounds.
    [Show full text]
  • Herdsmen Terror in Nigeria: the Identity Question and Classification Dilemma
    American Research Journal of Humanities & Social Science (ARJHSS)R) 2020 American Research Journal of Humanities & Social Science (ARJHSS) E-ISSN: 2378-702X Volume-03, Issue-03, pp 10-25 March-2020 www.arjhss.com Research Paper Open Access Herdsmen Terror In Nigeria: The Identity Question And Classification Dilemma PROF. CYRIL ANAELE Department Of History & Diplomatic Studies Salem University, Lokoja – Nigeria Phone: +23408068683303 *Corresponding Author: PROF. CYRIL ANAELE ABSTRACT:- Nigeria in recent years is a home to diversities of terror restricted to specific geo-political zones. Of all these terrors, non cuts across the country as that of the herdsmen. The herdsmen like invading Mongols leave deaths and destructions in their wake. Certainly and troubling too, is the government’s unwillingness to classify them as terrorist gang, but instead is dangling on classification dilemma. This too, has created identity question, on who actually are these herdsmen and their exact identity. Government has chosen to identify them as herdsmen and sees their killings as precipitated by conflict over land, between herders and farmers. The paper rejects government’s position that the herdsmen are not terrorists; and their activities as conflict over grazing land. To the contrary, the paper argues that the herdsmen are Fulani (in and outside Nigeria) hundred percent Muslim, and their terror fundamentally linked to causes beyond competition over land. It adopts the Samuel Huntington (1996) and Healy “Multiple Factor” theory for its theoretical framework. In methodology, it relies on primary and secondary data, using historical unit analysis for the presentation. The major findings of the study are, (i) the herdsmen are Fulani, (ii) their orchestrated violence across Nigeria is naked terrorism anxiously waiting to be listed as domestic terrorism before it morphoses into international terror (iii)the overall objective is Islamisation and Fulanisation of Nigeria.
    [Show full text]
  • CALLS for PAPERS to the INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE /HUMBOLT KOLLEG on PROSODY and LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY: CHALLENGES and PROSPECTS, ABIDJAN MAY 4Th to MAY 9Th 2014
    CALLS FOR PAPERS TO THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE /HUMBOLT KOLLEG ON PROSODY AND LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY: CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS, ABIDJAN MAY 4th to MAY 9th 2014. 1. DESCRIPTION OF CONTENT: PROSODY AS A CORE COMPONENT OF LANGUAGE AND SPEECH Prosodic systems in language range from the melodies and rhythms of intonation in sentences and dialogue on the one hand to intricate duration and tonal patterns of words. Physically, prosody is commonly defined as the variation of speech sounds and pitch patterns in time and has long been considered in traditional linguistics as peripheral to the core communicative functions of speech acts. Research into African tonal languages has played a highly significant but often unappreciated role in uncovering the significance and intricacies of prosody, revealing autosegments of tone, intonation, stress, accent, vowel harmony, nasality and other phonological features which pattern in a quasi-independent fashion in speech, and are represented as hierarchically organized parallel phonetic and phonological information streams or tiers. Prosody has been studied from the perspectives of many different disciplines: literature, (particularly poetry and drama rhetoric), musicology, cognitive and behavioral psychology, the study of language acquisition and language and speech pathologies, forensic linguistics, computational and mathematical linguistics, language typology and historical linguistic reconstruction, and engineering disciplines concerned with the speech synthesis and recognition interfaces associated with modern mobile devices. These interdisciplinary developments have also touched research on African languages, though mainly in separate universities and by individuals working without the extensive laboratory support of European, American and East Asian research groups. A strength of research on the distinctive prosodic attributes of African languages is that results have been based on extensive and detailed fieldwork on a very large variety of languages.
    [Show full text]
  • Esm 102 the Nigerian Environment
    ESM 102 THE NIGERIAN ENVIRONMENT ESM 102: THE NIGERIAN ENVIRONMENT COURSE GUIDE NATIONAL OPEN UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA 2 ESM 102 THE NIGERIAN ENVIRONMENT Contents Introduction What you will learn in this course Course aims Course objectives Working through this course Course materials Study units Assessment Tutor marked Assignment (TMAs) Course overview How to get the most from this course Summary Introduction The Nigerian Environment is a one year, two credit first level course. It will be available to all students to take towards the core module of their B.Sc (Hons) in Environmental Studies/Management. It will also be appropriate as an "one-off' course for anyone who wants to be acquainted with the Nigerian Environment or/and does not intend to complete the NOU qualification. The course will be designed to content twenty units, which involves fundamental concepts and issues on the Nigerian Environment and how to control some of them. The material has been designed to assist students in Nigeria by using examples from our local communities mostly. The intention of this course therefore is to help the learner to be more familiar with the Nigerian Environment. There are no compulsory prerequisites for this course, although basic prior knowledge in geography, biology and chemistry is very important in assisting the learner through this course. This Course-Guide tells you in brief what the course is about, what course materials you will be using and how you can work your way through these materials. It gave suggestions on some general guideline for the amount of time you are likely to spend on each unit of the course in order to complete it successfully.
    [Show full text]
  • Informational Materials
    Received by NSD/FARA Registration Unit 07/23/2020 3:38:29 PM THE CHRISTIAN POST The Christian Post Suspected Fulani Radicals Open Fire At Wedding Party In Nigeria. Killing At Least 21 July 22, 2020 Samuel Smith At least 30 people have been killed in separate attacks carried out by suspected Fulani militants in the Kaduna state of Nigeria in recent days, including over 20 who were killed in an attack on a wedding venue on Sunday. According to Nigerian media, at least 10 people were killed Monday evening in an attack on the rural Gora Gan village in the Zangon Kataf local government area while seven others were said to have been injured. Pastor Isaac Ango Makama, the vice chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria chapter in Zango Kataf, confirmed the attack in comments provided to the Daily Post newspaper. He was quoted as saying that there were as many as 50 attackers who shot their weapons sporadically and burned houses. Makama said that while most of the bodies of the deceased were sent to a local hospital, some community members are still searching for their loved ones. The attack came a day after at least 21 others were reported killed and as many as 30 others were injured when suspected gunmen attacked the Kakum Daji Village of Kaduna's Kaura local government in Kaduna Sunday night. Yashen Titus, head of the local community's development association, told Vanguard newspaper that gunmen believed to be herdsmen opened fire on a wedding party at around 10:35 p.m.
    [Show full text]